Read Online Requiem for a Realtor by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online Page A

a downtown street, parallel with Dirksen Boulevard. Not much open there at night except a couple of bars. There was the possibility that Collins had been in one of them, a possibility that Officer Agnes Lamb was checking out.
    After lunch he looked over what had been found on the body—a wallet, a separate leather container for business cards, a pack of Marlboro Lights, a plastic lighter, keys, change, lint. Of course, there was the scarf that had been found on the front seat of his car. There was a handkerchief in a pocket of his suit jacket, along with a matchbook from the Rendezvous, one of the bars on the street where the body had been found.
    There are bars and bars, the spectrum running from clean well-lighted places with windows through which to look in and look out to bistros where small lights embedded in the ceiling obscure rather than illumine the scene below them. The Rendezvous was of the ill-lit sort, but when Cy walked in, the door behind the bar was open and beyond that a door to the alley, where a truck was unloading supplies. The big guy behind the bar was a silhouette.
    â€œWhat took you so long, Cy?”
    â€œI recognize the voice but I can’t see your face.”
    â€œYou get used to it.”
    When he turned, light from behind revealed his face. “Perzel?”
    Joe Perzel had been a cop for twenty years. Apparently tending bar was his retirement occupation.
    â€œIt’s about Stanley Collins, right?”
    â€œWhere can we talk?”
    â€œI got to keep an eye on that delivery.”
    â€œSo let’s go back there.”
    Perzel shrugged. “Okay. Anyone comes in, I’ll see them.”
    â€œWho you expecting?”
    â€œCustomers. And the cops, of course.”
    â€œWhat do you know about the hit-and-run up the street?
    â€œWhen did it happen?”
    â€œLast night.”
    â€œI work days. But I listened to the news this morning.”
    â€œAnd heard about Stanley Collins.”
    â€œThe name jumped out at me.”
    â€œSo you do know him?”
    â€œHe was a regular. Around the clock. Not a lush, he just liked the place. He did a lot of business here.”
    â€œReal estate?”
    â€œCell phones.” Perzel made a face. “You know those hotels that have phones in the bathroom? Imagine getting a call from someone sitting on the pot. Nowadays a call could be coming from anywhere.”
    â€œSomebody ran over him, Joe.”
    â€œLast night?”
    â€œMidnight or after.”
    â€œThis street is pretty dark then.”
    â€œYou know anybody who’d want to run over him?”
    â€œSomeone he sold a house to?” But Perzel let his pixie smile die. “No. He was full of bull, you know, but a nice guy. People liked him.”
    â€œI bought a house from him.”
    â€œIs this a confession?”
    Cy was glad to get out of there, although he liked Joe Perzel. Or maybe because he did. Was some such future as that in store for him, tending bar? He’d rather be run over first.

3
    It was the fate of David Jameson, D.D.S., to think of such phrases as “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” when his defenses against remembering the night at the Frosinone Hotel broke down and those bitter hours came flooding into his mind in all their humiliating detail. How absurd all his prudent precautions beforehand seemed. They would arrive in a rental car, he would pay cash, he would use an assumed name, no one would ever know that he and Phyllis had each finally succumbed to the attractions of the other and meant to anticipate the joys of matrimony in a rented bed.
    â€œCompatibility is essential,” Phyllis had assured him. “I know.”
    David did not want to know more. When he thought of possessing Phyllis it was a vague concept, something like a cloud enveloping her. And he would feel even more intensely the pleasure holding her in his arms gave him, her upper body pressed against his, her eyes